MetroRail faces a big repair headache
As Rad Sallee reports, Metro is disclosing it has a problem with the light rail system:
After more than a year of rail operations, Metro President and CEO Frank Wilson revealed recently that 12 of the 16 electrically powered switches designed to move trains from one track to another in case of an accident or blockage were damaged by rainwater shortly after the line opened Jan. 1, 2004.
The switches were installed without adequate drainage, and Metro's effort to get them repaired has been hampered because none of the firms involved in MetroRail construction has claimed responsibility for the problem.
Since January, the switches have been operated not by touching a button but by going to the site, poking a long handle through a slot in the metal plate that covers the mechanism and moving the tracks with muscle power.
Although the switch supplier has agreed to replace the controls, improving drainage at the switch sites to prevent a recurrence may cost millions and take until fall, Metro officials said.
As Sallee notes, Wilson isn't disclosing this just out of the goodness of his heart; no, he's using it to illustrate why Metro needs to use the "design-build" method of construction on the next rail line segments:
Wilson said that if the Main Street line had been constructed with that method, in which a single company is in charge of a major project, responsibility for problems would clearly fall on the prime contractor. Several companies were involved in the construction of the rail line, making accountability difficult.
That's humorous -- Metro worried about accountability. But what's even more humorous (Sallee's story is great!) are Wilson's quotes at the end:
Wilson said the flooding and current problems exemplify "the trouble you get when you build the project in a more traditional manner where somebody designs it, somebody else builds it and (a third) somebody pays for it."
"The designers designed what they thought was correct," he said. "Siemens provided a switch they've probably provided to 10 other places. The builders built what was on the specifications. When you put it all together, it doesn't work.
"Now whose responsibility is that?"
Gee, maybe it's the responsibility of whoever decided on an at-grade level design.
(That was way too easy.)
Posted by Anne Linehan @ 05/08/05 07:53 AM | Print | Comments (3)
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